Ideas, information and industry news for collegiate retailers

Meetings can often feel like the enemy of progress. They can break up our days into odd chunks, prevent or interrupt deep work, and they can negatively effect workplace satisfaction. Despite downsides, meetings can also increase communication and collaboration, ideally producing a better end result. Committee meetings aren’t an exception. To ensure the time you commit to committee meetings is beneficial, it is important to periodically evaluate the reason for the committee and whether or not it is still serving its intended purpose.

Hiring for rush can be a trial. What you need and what you get can easily be two different things. You need competent, smart people with customer service skills that can manage the confused, impatient and frustrated students that throng the store in search of required titles. For many, though, the criteria you normally use to evaluate an employee goes by the wayside during rush. The sheer need for bodies to man the floor outweighs all other priorities. Still, the semester’s start is the best time to make the sort of impression on students that prompts return business. How can you ensure you have employees that will offer customers a positive experience?

Welcome to Textbook Wisdom, a new Foreword Online series that speaks directly to faculty about issues in the course material industry that affect the classroom. This is our second article. It explains the how inclusive access ensures students have their books Day One. Share it with faculty — and on social media. Bridge the gap between bookstores and educators.

Are your committees truly committees? Are they environments that draw on dynamic discussion and teamwork to resolve tenacious institutional problems? Or are they dominated by a single talker, and undone by the glaze in other members’ eyes as they fidget and not-so-inconspicuously check the time. Are they vibrant fonts of creativity or cesspools of politics, gossip and dissent-for-its-own-sake? Most importantly, are they generating buy-in for new initiatives, or are they simply an academic ritual — a proforma waste of time?

Student hunger on campuses is more prevalent than most people think. Head into a packed student center or campus dining facility, and it is easy to believe that the problem doesn’t exist on your campus, but chances are it does. According to a Students Against Hunger report, more than 45% of the 3,000 students surveyed from community and four-year colleges had experienced food insecurity in the past 30 days.

Finding ways to reach faculty about early adoptions is a perennial concern for college retailers. Faculty are often unaware that timely textbook choices do more than increase efficiency. They ultimately help students save money and receive more for their books at buyback. Because translating the nuances of the textbook industry to faculty in a way they understand is an ongoing challenge, we’ve compiled our top five most-read adoption communication articles from 2017.  Explore what you might have missed or bookmark this page as a reference.

Introducing “Textbook Wisdom,” a Foreword Online series that speaks directly to faculty about the course materials industry and its impact in the classroom. Share it with faculty — and on social media. Bridge the communication gap between bookstores and educators.

Scavenger hunts offer college stores a wealth of opportunity. They bring students through your doors. They offer a fun way to bond with newcomers, while helping them make new friends, get to know the campus and become acquainted with your offerings. What’s the best way to ensure your scavenger hunt is a success? Here, we offer our compendium of scavenger hunt articles. They include tales of successful store events and our Monthly Marketing Plans, which make setting up your scavenger hunt quick and easy.

We share a monthly marketing plan at the beginning of every month designed to increase store traffic and boost student trust and engagement. Included in the plans are posters, flyers, examples social media posts and more so your store has everything it needs for a spectacular event. As you develop your store’s marketing idea for 2018, check out our top five most popular monthly marketing plans in 2017.